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Saturday, April 5, 1980, University City—Today is the fourth anniversary of our first date. To celebrate, we went to a matinee to see a revival of the musical,Your Arm’s too Short to Box with God, a phrase which Jackson, being a preacher’s kid, was quite familiar with and thus excited to see the play. Afterwards, we went to Indigo, a popular restaurant in the gayborhood.Inside, it was cool and dark. The walls were painted a flat indigo under swirls of glossy violet and blue. The doors and banquettes were upholstered in tufted purple velvet. As our eyes adjusted to the dark, an ethereal young man, dressed all in blue, glided out of the shadows.
“Good evening,” he said softly. “Welcome to Indigo. The color indigo sits between blue and violet in the rainbow, and like the color itself, the Indigo experience represents tranquility, harmony, confidence, and integrity. Are you here for Four-twenty or Four-forty?”
“I beg your pardon?” Jackson said.
“Are you here for,” he sounded slightly bored and disappointed, “Four-twenty, the restaurant, or Four-forty, the dance club upstairs.”
“Oh,” Jackson said. “The restaurant.”
“Excellent,” the ghost said and, grabbing two menus, added, “Follow me.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said, suddenly remembering a science lesson on rainbows. “Indigo is visible in the light spectrum at a wavelength of four-twenty to four-forty nanometers.”
The ghost stopped so abruptly Jackson walked into him. He shot Jackson an annoyed look, then, addressing me, said, “No one ever gets that.”
A waiter, also dressed in blue, so harmonized with the décor that he appeared to materialize out of thin air, brought us water and detailed the evening’s specials. Everyone there appeared to move on silent cat feet, quiet and stealth and without disturbing the tranquil air.
Our waiter asked if we were celebrating a special occasion. Jackson told him it was our fourth anniversary as he reached for my hand. This is still so new to us—being able to be openly affectionate in public. Watching our clasped hands, the waiter, whose name he insisted was Henri even though he was the least French-looking person I’ve ever seen, recommended we start with oysters on the half shell, with fermented shallot, York imperial apple mignonette, and Daikon radish. For dinner, Jackson ordered the grilled Iberian pork chop, forest mushrooms, lentil, balsamic braised onion, and horseradish gremolata, and I ordered the glazed duck breast with castelfranco, coffee, black grape, celery root, and vin cotto. I’d never eaten duck before. Just before our meal arrived, the host coalesced from the slight breeze the server left in his wake. He offered us a bottle of Domaine de l’Eveche Pinot Noir, which he insisted was “on the house.” He poured it into our glasses then evaporated like a wisp of smoke.
The wine was as rich and dark as the restaurant; we toasted each other and felt very grown up, very much in love, and very far away from Locust Hollow.
Sunday, June 29, 1980, University City—“You’ve never been to a Pride march?” DAX asked us incredulously last Saturday, as he pawed through a rack of shiny shirts at Lambda Rising—the gay bookstore and thrift shop—in search of something to wear to said march.
“Do you know where we grew up?”
“Well, you going to this one.”
“But it’s downtown, isn’t it?” Jackson asked.
“Yeah. So?”
“So how are we gonna get there? Traffic will be insane, and I read there’s a lot of street closures. We can’t possibly drive.”
“We’ll take the trolley, like everyone else,” DAX said.
And that’s how we found ourselves at our first Gay Pride march today, which was less a march than a strut, a boogie, a twisting joyous dance down the broadest avenue in the city: gayboys, lithe and shirtless, covered in rainbow flags and glitter, shimmied; sequined, towering drag queens on floats tossed beads the colors of a rainbow into the raucous crowd; dykes on bikes, topless, their pasties shimmering in the summer breezes, defiant and scowling, roared past on Harleys and Kawasakis, powerful and loud as tanks on a battlefield.
Silent, clinging to the edges of the crowd were scores of men in hats, whose brims were pulled low over their foreheads, with turned-up collars and glasses so dark it was a wonder they could see. “Bunch of closet queens,” DAX pronounced dismissively as Jackson and I rushed along in his dancing wake.
Early in the afternoon, DAX caught a stranger’s eye, told us he’d catch up to us later and was gone. I was baffled. In a single glance, he and a stranger had met, recognized each other, andagreed to meet up, across a crowd, without uttering a single word.
Jackson and I wandered aimlessly, taking it all in. The crowd grew, and Jackson took my hand as if afraid I, too, would suddenly disappear.
“What are you thinking?” I asked Jackson as we watched a bunch of men and women dancing together to thunderous disco music on a swaying stage at the end of the street.
“It never occurred to me there could be somany…of…us.”
DAX, reappearing as suddenly as he’d vanished, ushered us into a dimly lit bar that was gearing up for the after-march dance party. Giggles, powered by a river of alcohol, burst in the smoky air. Shrieks of “Girlfriend!” and “Miss Thang!” exploded in the room like fireworks. Above the empty dance floor, a mirrored disco ball started to turn faster as the DJ pumped up the volume of the music and began spinning records like a dervish.
Once again, trailing in DAX’s brilliant wake, we found ourselves aboard the last trolley to University City. As the trolley hurtled out of the station, I felt like Cinderella being pursued by midnight. As the train sped along its tracks, downtown receded, but its bright lights refused to dim.
Tuesday, November 4, 1980, University City—Today, Jackson, MJ, DAX, Faiz, Sue P, and I all voted for the first time. Perils, who being older has voted before, put herself in charge of leading us to the campus polling place located in the great hall of the church on Locust Walk. She coached us last night on how to operate the voting machines. As each of us emerged from the booth having cast our first vote and feeling very grown up, she led the other voters in line and the poll workers in applauseand shouted congratulations. A photographer from the campus newspaper asked us to pose for a group photo. Jimmy Carter was, of course, our man. We were confident he would win, not just because we had used our voices and cast votes in his favor, but really how could he lose to Ronald Reagan—a once-upon-a-time movie star and former president of the Screen Actors Guild and a former two-time governor of California, who was also a failed two-time presidential candidate and who was currently running on a platform to increase federal revenue by lowering taxes, a plan one of his Republican opponents publicly derided as “voodoo economics,” aided by his plastic, Barbie doll wife, former starlet and current lady in red, Nancy?
Wednesday, November 5, 1980, University City—We woke up to the devastating news that Carter lost to Reagan. I heard the news when my alarm clock went off. I immediately changed the station only to hear the same grim words. I padded into the living room and turned on our small black-and-white TV. It was true: Ronald Reagan had beaten the president. I turned the TV off and went into the kitchen where I found Jackson crying over his cereal bowl. I’ve never seen him cry before. I gently took the bowl from him and wrapped my arms around him. “It’ll be OK,” I said, “We’ll win next time.” With a conviction I did not feel, I added, “A pendulum will only swing so far in one direction before it inevitably swings in the opposite direction.”
I can’t help but feel that our first exercise in responsible citizenry resulted in absolute failure. All across campus, dejected students are staggering about, still wearing their “Carter/Mondale 1980” buttons.
Violet (1981)
